Breaker
I wasn’t the best at writing letters.
I was more of a one-word texter or meme sender.
So, this felt foreign.
The pen strange in my hand as I gripped it tight, my conversation with Phoenix washed over me in a fit of rage that somehow descended into peace.
I hated that he was right.
Not just about this, but about everything.
I had always looked to Junior as the one who would rise out of the ashes. After all, he was Phoenix’s son, but now I wondered if that wasn’t the idea for every one of the heirs.
The ashes of those killed cried out for justice, didn’t they? Their souls didn’t sleep, and it was our job to rise up and fight for the good as much as we fought against the bad.
There was an inequality in the way our dads had served, a blind need to protect us at all costs without thinking about how it would affect us in the future, and that was what made these crowns so fucking heavy.
The knowledge that they were the reason they felt that way.
That Tex Campisi, in all his greatness, thought he knew best.
That Phoenix Nicolasi, in all his wisdom and secrets, could not prevent even this from happening.
That Nixon Abandonato, in all his arrogance, didn’t even see it coming.
Dante Alfero, the one closest to us in age next to Dom, didn’t see it.
They were too consumed with their wives, their need to be with them, that they had missed us, hadn’t they? They’d missed the clues.
Even Chase, in all his suspicions, with all his secrets, thought he knew what was best when he threw me in the shower that day, not realizing that he was playing perfectly into a plan that had been ordained the day I came screaming into this world.
God, my chest hurt.
I rubbed the middle of it with my right hand.
It was early in the morning. They would be up soon, and they’d wonder where I was, and I wouldn’t be here to tell them.
“Do you think we have a chance to go to Heaven?” I asked Phoenix as we’d driven around while he told me what I needed to do.
His sigh was heavy as he pulled the car over to the side of the road and gripped the steering wheel until his hands turned white. “Nobody deserves Heaven, Breaker, not even the best of us and definitely not the worst, but I don’t think a truly loving God would keep you out just because you made an impossible choice. I used to think the opposite; I used to think a lot of shit until I had Junior and realized that it is, in fact, possible to have your heart walk outside your body and run into oncoming traffic, then wonder why you suddenly sprout a gray hair.” He didn’t laugh, he rarely did unless something was really funny, but he was smiling over at me, another rarity that almost shocked me speechless. “When you’re a parent, suddenly everything that used to matter doesn’t. And everything that used to be so simple becomes so fucking complicated. But one thing I can promise you, my son. No matter how many times he screams at me, fights, makes me bleed, tells me he hates me, says he wants nothing to do with me, there will never be a day in my fucking life where I won’t wait for him with open arms to come back to me. There isn’t one hair on his head I don’t pray for, there isn’t one second of the day that I don’t think of him, even if he hates me, even if he comes back to me a murderer, blood staining his hands, demons in his mind, soulless— He is mine. Do you understand? He is mine.” He pounded the steering wheel with his hand. “So, do I think God would kick out his children? Not anymore. No. I think he’s used to people walking into his arms with blood staining their souls, I think he’s used to darkness as much as he is the light.”
His words hit home, and then he reached over and put a hand on my arm. “You know, I loved you like my own the minute I found you, Breaker.”
“When I chose my name,” I whispered.
“When you looked up at me with tears in your eyes, screaming that you broke her, so that’s the only name you deserve. You screamed it again and again like you’d never stop. Until I pulled you into my arms.”
“And said it wasn’t my fault.” My voice shook. “You told me I was brave.”
“Because you are,” Phoenix rasped. “And I’m proud of the man you’ve become. If you hear nothing else, hear this. You, Breaker Campisi, make me proud to call you family, and even if you are under Tex’s protection, I’ll always think of you more as my son.”